Nature, Outdoor & wilderness living skills, traditional & primitive skills and crafts in the north of Swedish Lapland

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spoon gouge

I’ve wanted to try and make a large kasa for some time and after an area of trees had been cleared on one of our reserves I found a large bur on an Alder (Alnus glutinosa) stump, which I removed with a chainsaw.

I removed the outer bark and using my Fiskars hatchet cut cut away faults and flaws until I reached good wood. Then I marked the size and shape of the kasa I wanted to carve from the bur.

Using my gouge

I began to shape the inside of the bowl and after a couple of hours work it looked like this

and after another hour it looked like this

I continued using my hatchet to shape the underside

The patterning in the bur is beautiful

and after another couple of hours work the kasa was really starting to take shape

My third recent purchase was a set of interchangeable carving tools made by Flexcut. I bought their quick connect palm handle and then from their range of tools selected four that I thought would be most useful.

Three are from their #6 sweeps and one from their spoon gouges range.

The handle is comfortable to hold and the blades fit securely into it. I used them to carve this spoon out of a piece of Almond wood

and I tried to carve a cup out of a piece of Apple wood

The spoon gouge is the ideal shape for carving a cup but the cutting blade is only 7/16 inch wide and so it would take hours to carve a cup. The #6 sweeps have wider cutting blades but the shape of the gouge is flat rather than curved and so they are not ideally shaped for carving a curved cup. In the picture below the spoon gouge is at the front and the #6 sweep at the back

I contacted Flexcut to ask if they have a larger spoon gouge set or would consider making them for those of us who make cups but unfortunately like so many companies who have a potentially good product they did not respond to my query……UPDATE! Flexcut have emailed today (25/11/09) and it this time they do not have a gouge suited to making cups.

A friend who is an agricultural engineer agreed to try and re-profile the 1 inch #6 sweep

Firstly he heated it

and then re-shaped it

I need to sharpen and hone the cutting edge and I will then test it and let you know how I get on.